Remote control CLI sessions on web and mobile in public preview

[ebndev]

Hey everyone 👋

We’ve got something exciting to share—Copilot CLI is no longer limited to your local machine.

With the new copilot --remote capability (now in public preview), you can monitor and steer your CLI sessions directly from GitHub on the web or mobile 📱💻

What does this mean?

When you enable remote sessions, your CLI activity is streamed to GitHub in real time. You’ll get a link (and QR code) that you can open from another device to:

• Follow along with what your session is doing
• Send follow-up prompts or steering messages
• Stay in control—even when you're away from your terminal

Everything stays in sync between your CLI and GitHub, and your session remains private to you.

copilot-remote-ghui_final.mp4

What you can do with remote sessions

Remote sessions support all the familiar Copilot CLI capabilities:

• Steer the agent mid-session or continue the workflow after a step completes
• Review and tweak plans before execution
• Switch between plan, interactive, and autopilot modes—or stop the session anytime
• Approve or deny permission requests based on your CLI settings
• Respond to questions from Copilot (via the ask_user tool)

Getting started

Here are a few quick tips to jump in:

• Run /update to make sure you're on the latest version of Copilot CLI
• Start a session with copilot --remote, or enable it anytime with /remote
• Make sure you're working inside a GitHub repository
• Open the session link to monitor and interact from the web
• Running longer tasks? Use /keep-alive to keep your machine awake

Want to try it on mobile?

• Android: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.github.android
• iOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/NLskzwi5

Note: If you're using Copilot Business or Enterprise, your admin will need to enable remote control and CLI policies before you can use this feature.

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Learn more

Check out the docs for more details:
https://docs.github.com/copilot/how-tos/copilot-cli/steer-remotely

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We’d love to hear how you’re using this—whether it’s coding from the couch, debugging on the go, or something else entirely.

👉 Jump into the discussion and share your experience!

[avaana236-art]

This sounds like a really useful feature, especially for developers who need flexibility on the go. Being able to remotely control CLI sessions from both web and mobile can make it much easier to manage tasks, monitor processes, and troubleshoot without being tied to a single machine. It’s great to see this in public preview, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it evolves with more feedback and improvements.

[matthewlloyd]

Fantastic to see Copilot catching up with Claude here, but as someone who works mostly on private repos that aren't on GitHub.com, this is disappointing to see and an immediate non-starter:

! Remote session disabled: not in a GitHub repository.

[elliebennett]

We're working on expanding support. Check back soon for updates

[Ponjimon]

Yeah, I was very disappointed to see this message, glad you're working on expanding support though! Use cases may vary but I mostly use Copilot CLI for anything BUT working on a GitHub repository, for that I'd be using the VSCode extension anyway.